


romance is dead.

by jeonginks



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 12:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19273645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeonginks/pseuds/jeonginks
Summary: The last night you spend with changbin after a one week encounter.





	romance is dead.

**Author's Note:**

> After dumping the Chan au, and then the Jisung au, Changbin became my lord and savior this morning. This is a concept I’ve wanted to test out for so long, I hope it turns out fine (not that much has changed, really). 
> 
> And this piece is the prime reason why I should never touch romance ever again.
> 
> Warning: mc was in an abusive relationship.

Love is a funny construct. You believed in it and you didn’t believe in it, your belief lies on a different plane whenever it was convenient for you.

When you see old couples playing on the swings in your local mini-park, chatting and laughing with each other, you let yourself believe love could be eternal and grateful; When you see young strangers running into each others’ arms on the street, sharing an ice cream cone and their swaying hands held tightly together in the middle, you let yourself fall in the middle of the spectrum—you wish for their love to last but you don’t expect for it to be; When you sit across from your boyfriend on the dining table in your shared apartment, a new bruise inked across side of your head, you are forced to believe that love is very much lying on the ground breathing its last breath as your boyfriend stomped on it with his ignorant feet.

And when Changbin runs his finger across the side of your cheek after pushing back parts of your hair to reveal the lingering dots of black and purple stained your features, his eyes flickering with a sort of protectiveness and concern that even you hadn’t been showing yourself in a long time; Or when you two laid close together on a double bed in a hotel room after you voiced out your anxiety of heading home, and despite the burning aroma of tension transferred between your desirable gazes, he didn’t try to imitate anything; Or when he always lets you rant about your own problem, never once interrupting you and simply listening silently at the side, unmoving and attentive.

Moments when he was good to you, when, when he made you feel the refreshing palpitation of being young and attractive, when he played more part in being the love of your life, you wanted to believe in love… but you found yourself falling out of the level line of your belief instead.

Changbin was only in the city for a one-week business trip. You kept in mind of his soon-to-arrive departure so you could keep your feelings distant, distant enough to prevent a potential heartbreak when the deadline of your ambiguously intimate relationship comes to an end.

For some reason, your purposeful ignorance for the way he treats you—with such affection and consideration—wasn’t a good enough signal boost that you had already fallen madly in love with him within a span of six days, be it true love or not.

(But really, what even is true love?)

“Hey, you,” Changbin said with his signature soft smile, where the corner of his lips arch up widely and the center of them parts just enough to let his teeth peek out, when you walked out of your company’s building. When you approached within reaching distance, he moved his hand up to give your hair a ruffle, “How’s work today?”

“Stop doing that,” You glared up at him lightly as your hand flew up to fix your ruined hair. Ruffling your hair was a rather childish, annoying habit of his that was starting to become one of your pet peeves the more he did it.

“Oh, take the fun right out of it, won’t you?” Changbin said as he followed your footsteps, no longer awkwardly trailing behind you but instead walking side by side with you after six days of bonding, “It is only tradition that one tousles another’s hair to show them they’re done well.”

“What am I, five?” You rolled your eyes at his unreasonable point, turning your head to the side so you could look up at him. He could feel your eyes on him but he didn’t spare you any glances, “Stop doing it or I will go ahead and ruin that perfectly styled head of yours.”

“Oh yeah?” Changbin laughed and instantly you knew you’ve made a mistake of challenging him when there was nothing more he loved than to prove someone else wrong or to push certain people past the edge just to say how things would turn out (of course, only when the situation is more playful than serious. Changbin could be funny but he wasn’t dumb).

When you finally turned his attention to you, the darkening night and blinking streetlight casting down a half illumination of dim orange and sky-blue on your face and magnifying the light reflection in your eyes as you stared up at him, Changbin felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest.

There was nothing more he wanted to do than to capture this moment, with your eyes and your smile, his love and his joy, all present in the same frame of perfection. And he would keep it in his wallet for the rest of his life, for reminiscence, for nostalgia, for remembrance.

You giggled and ducked away from his hand when he abruptly attacked you, stumbling to the front as laughs continued to bubble out of your lips in a euphoric rhythm better than any record albums Changbin had ever heard in his life. He walked forward a few steps to sneak up behind you before he circled his arms around your shoulders and twirled you both around the empty street.

“Okay, you win! You win!” You said, clutching his hand tightly as you leaned into him to steady yourself easier while Changbin kept a good balance as you helped you both halt on your tracks. When the world stopped turning in stars around you and you could still feel his arms humbly around your frame, you looked up until your head bumped against the spot between his collarbones. “You win.”

Your voice came out as a whisper, finding yourself slowly and surely losing the ability to speak when the tip of your nose was touching his after he deiced to fully glance down at you and you had the best view of his plump lips. You two were stuck in a breathy position, a position you’ve seen young couples put themselves in voluntarily on a normal date, and you wondered how you could feel if you could manifest into a stranger and see yourself like this.

Would you stay in the twilight zone of love?

“Wanna grab dinner?” He managed to utter out after snapping out of his own imagination.

You quickly nodded, still haven’t quite moved away from him but you learned to look away and kept your head back to the original leveled position. You gulped nervously, “Yeah, let’s get dinner.”

Would you lean more towards having low expectations for love’s life expectancy or would you let yourself hope for the fairytale-like miracle instead?

* * *

When you sat down across from Changbin in the restaurant booth, you were almost frightened at how similar the scene appeared when you compared to the dark living room of your apartment when you sat across your boyfriend. But you were relaxed this time, completely unguarded and comfortable.

“You haven’t told me how work was,” Changbin said after he picked up a piece of tempura and shoved it in his mouth.

You licked your lower lip after you finished swallowing the delicious noodle that was far too pricy for just this small amount served. But you’ve learned that Changbin never really cared about the prices when it came to eating, which was rather incredulous to you at first but you’ve also come to find out his bank account probably has more numbers than you could imagine so nothing trivial like this should ever be a problem to him.

“You ask me this every day and I tell you the same answer each time,” you moved your hand in a circle, urging him to finish the sentence for you but it seemed like Changbin was far to busy with the food than to play around with you at the moment. You pursed your lips together then, “Nothing much happened, everything has been the same for the past six years. I swear I am going to be stuck in this dead-end job for the rest of my life.”

Changbin laughed, a snorting sound emerging from his nose as he rolled his eyes at you, “You’re only your mid-twenties. Wait until you reach your early thirties like me, then the mid-life crisis will really kick in for you.”

You frowned, tilting your head to the side, “But you make a lot of money. I barely make enough to support myself and…” you played with your food, stabbing the soup and noodle with your wooden chopsticks aggressively as a face played in your mind, “my boyfriend.”

Changbin didn’t glance up at you when you mentioned him, deliberately leaving out his name as if you knew he had forever etched that jerk’s name in his blacklist. But addressing him as your significant other didn’t make it better for Changbin either as it only proved to him that you were very much unavailable, yet somehow you act as if you hold no special feelings towards anyone and your main goal was to lead him on.

Starting by complaining about your boyfriend, then to spilling tears over relationship problems you’ve purposefully left unsaid within Changbin’s presence, then to calling him in the middle of the night telling him you had nowhere else to go, and then you two end up lying in the same bed again, staring at each other with an unexplainable feeling scrumming in the air surrounding your two.

Times like those, Changbin wanted nothing more than to grab you and pull you to him. To feel your warmth on his bare body and to taste every inch of your alluring lips that had been haunting him during his every leisure time.

You never told him you hoped for him to initiate it too.

Things were always kept chaste, with long, meaningless talks and legs tangled together while night lights blared from the city awake outside the window, and then it was a battle of who stays awake for the longest until both of you simply falls into a deep slumber, unable to acknowledge being in each others’ arms like that was the one thing you two have always wanted.

“Let me tell you one thing,” Changbin started after a long moment of silence where he spent putting out the frustration in his chest. He held his chopsticks dangerously, letting them dangle at the tip of his fingers and barely holding on. “I divorced my wife years ago, I never told you that but yeah, my wife and I separated because of constant little disputes that don’t really come to light if you let time put a space in between each of them too much. But the thing is, if you sit down and think back to all the times you’ve argued with your significant other, you will realize how your relationship might not work out as well as you think it used to be.”

You pursed your lips. You knew what he was trying to tell you.

Romance dies, love dies. Maybe it doesn’t happen to everyone but you have to be able to feel it when it does, and you have to let go of it because the dead love will do nothing but hurt you.

Your voice soft as you spoke then, “What are you trying to say?”

Changbin sighed a little, “I’m saying I’ve only known you for a little but I think I know more about your boyfriend’s annoying antics than you do. You’ve never told me anything good about him and I think that is not okay.”

You let out a shaky breath inwardly, not daring to look into his eyes in fear that you cave in and tell him the humiliating truth of the abusive relationship you were currently in. Your mind kept telling you things, giving you image, overthinking how Changbin would find hilarity in your inability to protect yourself even after you were well into adulthood. Even you said it yourself: you’re not five anymore, you are no longer a child.

“I…I can’t get out of it,” you said, lowering your head.

“I understand that you still love him–”

“I don’t,” you snapped your head up to look at him, your genuine gaze startling him with a million volts down his chest. You looked as if you wanted him to know you weren’t in love with someone else, but in no way did you indicate you were in love with him. “I really don’t.”

“Then why are you still with him?” Changbin asked, feeling a small blush creeping up his cheeks at how nosy he must be sounding.

You exhaled tiredly at the overwhelming thoughts of your failed relationship. Telling him you were scared would raise suspicion and that was the one thing you didn’t want Changbin to know, so you shrugged.

“I just can’t, okay? I can’t,” you said, putting down your chopsticks as your eyes focused on his defeated expression when he leaned back against his seat, his utensil still loosely hung around his fingers. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to him for not loving him but refusing to leave the relationship,” he muttered, looking to the side to avoid eye contact with you completely, “You’re lying to him. This isn’t love.”

You couldn’t tell if he was talking about you and your boyfriend, or if he was talking about you both.

* * *

The ride home was silent. You two sat at two ends of the backseat, each looking outside the window to keep your mind occupied. The edge cutting tension was so filled you thought perhaps the taxi driver felt it too, which was why he decided to turn up the volume of the radio and stopped his attempt at small conversations.

Changbin would usually walk out of the taxi to give himself a better view of you walking into your apartment estate building and get into the elevator, but he stayed inside the car this time. When it was your stop, he only looked over briefly with a forced smile and waved you goodbye as you got out of the car. He didn’t do anything else aside from letting his eyes linger on your back as you walked away, no hugs and no playful mumbling of a good night greeting.

The ride up the elevator was nerve-wracking. Times spent with Changbin were always a getaway from your normal life, from your reality. He served as a key to enter your fragments of imagination, the happy and enjoyable life you have always wanted, the free adulthood you had fanaticized about during the age of five after your parents denied you of the chocolate bar after midnight.

Changbin was what you would have wanted, perhaps not what you deserved but he was what made your sickening reality so much more alive by sprinkling tinges and pinches of good in it.

But this night was different. You did realize you were the one who started it and you did beat yourself up for bringing up what’s-his-name but you didn’t appreciate how the conversation continued despite your obvious discomfort.

You weren’t able to catch a break from him today, even with Changbin’s presence, and that made your night absolutely horrible.

The elevator door opened and you couldn’t help but clutch your house key in fear. The same hope of him not being home flashing before your eyes repeatedly as you marched to your flat. You inserted the key to the lock and quietly turned it open, pressing on the doorknob and opening the door as slowly as possible.

The moment you reached out to turn on the light, your eyesight registered a piece of glass figure lying towards your face. Just in time, you dodged by turning your face to the side, but your head fell victim to the wine glass that hit your head and fell to the floor in pieces.

The door was opened behind you, you could just close it and run down the fire escape, or bang on a neighbor’s door. You closed your eyes before looking up to face your complete sober boyfriend, and you stood there rigidly, unable to move an inch when you caught their eyes.

“Where were you?” He huffed out angrily, stomping towards you and gripping a hand around your wrist before dragging you into the living room.

“Dinner.”

“Full sentence, you useless piece of shit,” he said through gritted teeth, yanking you towards him harshly and causing you to let out a startled whimper.

“I–I went out to have dinner,” you croaked out, cursing yourself for acting so damn weak in front of him all the time. You should have the power to fight back, you do, but you’ve been beaten so far into submission the idea of overthrowing the dangerous figure in your life seemed almost impossible, the idea of setting yourself the path of escape couldn’t even begin to come into the spotlight of your brainwashed mind.

He laughed then, the past fluttery sound turned into nothing but fiery and horrifying. He doesn’t laugh truly anymore, it was all just an indication before everything goes uphill for him and downhill for you.

“Did you go out with him again?”

“Who is him?”

“Don’t lie to me, you fucker, you know who I’m talking about,” his voice raised, the concept that you were able to find peace and content within someone else, the concept that you could make it on your own without his presence, the concept that you were better than him complete driving his ego down to the ground and making him wanting nothing more than to crush you beneath his feet.

You bit your lower lip. You never mentioned anything about Changbin to him, he must have either stalked you or watched you come home through the apartment windows (which was about the same thing, really) and saw you smiling up at Changin the way you stopped doing to him.

How could he ever expect you to? It was bullshit.

When you didn’t speak, his hand shot out to clutch a firm hold around your throat. He pushed your head back, restricting your airway an excessive amount that you couldn’t even choke normally. He glared at you, his other hand high up in the air, “Answer me, (Name)!”

You were about to utter out an answer, using the remaining strength you have at the brick of your own death to still give him what he wanted. But a pair of hands reached out to your waist and your boyfriend’s wrist, the beige sleeve of Changbin’s thick coat coming into your blurry sight and you smiled in relief.

Within a second, you were peeled away from his grip and carefully moved to the side where you leaned against the shoe shelf for support on catching your own breath. Changbin spared you a brief glance before he returned his full attention to your boyfriend, the hand that gripped his wrist yanked back so Changbin could place a choke hold back on him.

Slamming his back to the nearest wall, Changbin got uncomfortably close to the chained man to display his overwhelming amount of dominance. His voice was low, way deeper and way more threatening than you have ever heard him, when he spoke, “Leave them alone.”

“Who–who the fuck are you?”

“Seo Changbin, the one (Name)’s been hanging out with,” Changbin replied impatiently, “Don’t let me catch this happening again or else I will guarantee (Name) will bust you worse than I do this time because I assure you they can.”

You gulped nervously when Changbin removed his hands and stumbled back, feeling a little guilty when you found fulfillment in seeing your boyfriend fall to the ground in the same way you continuously did before. Your eyes trailed up from his fallen body to Changbin, who quickly approached you to grab a hold of your hand.

“Why are you here?” You asked, looking up at him.

“This is my last night here… I can’t get over the fact that I just let you walk away like this so I got off the taxi to find you. The security guard is terribly easy to bribe, by the way,” he said, squeezing your hand after you did it once first. “Okay, we have to go to the police about this–”

“Changbin,” you called out, for the first time of saying his name. Your heart fluttered at the name and Changbin’s wavered at your voice. He could not believe he never introduced himself to you formally, he could have been hearing his name spoken in the sweetest way possible. He wasted all that time.

You inhaled, turning back gently to glance at the light of your apartment, “I… I don’t want to talk about this right now. I don’t want to deal with it, I just… I want to rest.”

Changbin stared at you for a moment, and then he nodded.

This was about you, not him, and he’s going to do whatever you wanted.

* * *

You two were back in the position again: staring at each other on the double bed with the city lights flashing from outside and car horns blaring through the busy road.

The same old atmosphere of unspoken yearning lingered around you two at times when he would glance down at the partly exposed skin of your chest or when your eyes would brush past the pursing of his lips. But there was something else this time. You felt different, like your heart was completely opened for him this time, naked and exposed to its core and ready for him.

“I know you don’t want to talk about this but… why didn’t you tell me, (Name)?” Changbin asked suddenly, his cheek pressed against his arm.

“I was embarrassed, Changbin,” you pursed your lips together, “I can’t tell you that because I was afraid you would make fun of me for being weak.”

He was offended you would even begin to think that way of him but he supposed your head wired differently than most people due to what happened to you. With a gentle sigh, Changbin reached down to touch your knee, rubbing circles on the surface in a comforting way, and he said nothing for a while.

He just looked at you with those genuine eyes of his that still sparked bright in the dark room. His feelings for you left unspoken and instead choosing to give you solace through his actions, as he had always been doing so, by remembering little details about you, by saving you continuously from desperate situations.

“Oh, I would never, (Name),” he spoke quietly, looking down at his hand timidly, “I… I…”

And by loving you, of course.

And you knew, of course.

“Changbin… hey… Changbin?” You scooted closer to him then, when you found him starting to stutter and unable to speak clearly. Lowering your head down to below his face, you softened at the faint blush that had risen up to his cheeks. This is him, this is the man who’ve treated you well the way you deserved, this is the man you should be falling in love with.

And you were, you did.

Your hands flew up to cup his cheeks gently before your head moved up to kiss his lips. Changbin snapped his eyes shut in surprise, almost automatically as if he had been waiting for this to happen (he  _had_  been waiting for this to happen).

It was a bit clumsy at first, perhaps due to how desperate for each other you guys were and it felt as if no amount of measurement could signify how close you two really needed to be to each other. It was just smacking of lips and clashing of noses the first few seconds, and then Changbin sat up on the bed and his hands roamed down to your legs so he could pull you onto his lap.

Your legs instinctively circled around his waist securely, your hands that were originally on the side of his jaw moving forward so you could wrap your arms around his neck for better leverage when he slowly laid you across the bed on your back and put himself in between your legs.

Your lips moved with each other, creating steps to a one of a kind choreography that only you two would ever be able to recreate. And you felt again that you were completely opened for him this time, naked and exposed to its core and ready for his endearing touches.

With your hands on the nape of his neck, his hands brushing tenderly in your hair, and your lips peppering across each other, together you created an unexplainable feeling that shone as bright as the sun and as clear as the river.

The feeling was like dancing in a giant, extravagant ball with each other, twirling and smiling—it was flowy, it was dreamy, it was sparklingly and beautifully fulfilling.

It is love.

This blossoming feeling, this divine bloom that was occurring in the depths of your heart, this feeling with Seo Changbin is, undoubtedly and definitely, love.

And you asked yourself one more time: is it the hope for eternity or is it low expectations?

It was definitely the option of eternity.

* * *

The next morning was quiet as the acknowledgment that Changbin would be catching an early plane to go back to his home city finally kicked in. You spent the morning sitting on the edge of the bed, reminding him to pack everything he’s most likely already packed up in his suitcase as the lingering feeling of the previous night still breathed in your chest.

His touch, his lips, his voice—everything was haunting you and you knew they still would be until the very last moment.

How could this be? How could you have waited this long for yourself to open up to him the way you did yesterday? Now he has to leave and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.

After both of you were prepared to leave the hotel room, you two headed down the elevator and arrived at the lobby. You stood at the back of the lobby, watching his back as he stood by the reception table to check out his room, and the more your heart clenched at the idea of him leaving your side.

“When are you going?” You asked when Changbin approached your side, a hand tugging at the hem of the shirt he lent you for the night and which you never planned to return.

“The airport, there is a cab station near here,” he replied as he pushed open the front doors to head outside.

You looked around the busy street, at the sea of people sulking and hurrying around you two, and you hummed, “I’m not going to walk you there, I have work and the bus station is on the other side, Changbin.”

He seemed a little taken back by your answer, perhaps he had thought you would stick with him until the end of his trip. You smiled up at him then, showing absolutely no signs of your hesitancy and the wishful thinking present in your head, and Changbin gulped.

“Promise me you find me if anything like that happens again and you can’t handle it yourself, (Name),” he said, “Okay?”

“I will, I promise,” you nodded, still smiling up at him softly.

Changbin sighed, knowing why the sadness emerged inside his mind and knowing very well how to cure it, but he couldn’t. Work is work.

“I kind of don’t want to leave now,” he said inaudibly, touching your hands to savor his last moments with you.

You laughed, “Why? Because you’re in love with me?”

He didn’t try to deny it and the blush ceased to creep up his cheeks like it used to whenever he thought about you. Changbin only nodded with half-opened eyes that could only see you, “Yeah. What about you? Did you fall in love with me?”

You clicked your tongue, defeated and beaten down emotionally in ways no one had ever done, and you realize why people tell you love is dangerous. It’s strong, it can bring you happiness but it can also bring your grieve.

Love does what it wants when it wants.

Without answering his question, not wanting to speak of it so there leaves no real confirmation, you stood up to plant a long, firm kiss on Changbin’s lips to which he responded by tilting his head to the side and drown in as much as he was able to.

When you pulled away, you patted his shoulder and eyed behind him, “You go first, turn away and go.”

Changbin looked at you for a little more while, mentally capturing your features in his mind so he won’t forget. He wasn’t afraid he would ever forget you either. Then he turned around and walked away.

You watched with a heavy heart, your arms crossed to contain the beating heart that yelled at you to run to him, to stop him, and you watched him walk farther and farther away until the sea of people covered him up completely.

You turned around to leave then.

By that moment, the second you turned around, your romance is dead and your eternity shattered. But you smiled for a moment because the feeling still lingered, the feeling of it when your love was still alive.

Love is a funny construct. You believed in it and you didn’t believe in it, your belief lies on a different plane whenever it was convenient for you.

And Seo Changbin is a romance you want to believe in.


End file.
